Telangana: The Telangana High Court has quashed proceedings under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, holding that caste-based insults made within a private domestic setting do not attract the Act, which requires the alleged offence to occur in “public view.”
Justice E.V. Venugopal, deciding Criminal Petition No. 3799 of 2021 arising from an inter-caste marriage dispute, ruled that for offences under Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the SC/ST (POA) Act, 2015 to apply, the insult or intimidation must take place in public or be witnessed by independent persons.
The complainant, belonging to the Mala Scheduled Caste community, alleged that his wife’s Kapu family humiliated him after their marriage in 2014 by using casteist slurs and burning his clothes at their residence. Later, in 2018, the wife allegedly demanded divorce accompanied by caste-based threats. A case was registered in 2019 under Section 504 IPC and the SC/ST Act, though the couple’s divorce had already been finalized before the complaint.
The defence argued, citing Hitesh Verma v. State of Uttarakhand, that the alleged acts occurred within a domestic sphere and not in public view. The court found no material showing any caste-based abuse in a public setting, emphasizing that the statutory requirement of “public view” was not met.
Relying on Supreme Court precedents, Justice Venugopal concluded that the allegations arose from marital discord, not a public humiliation based on caste. He held that continuing the proceedings would amount to an abuse of process of law.
Accordingly, the High Court allowed the petition and quashed the proceedings in S.C. No. 229 of 2020.
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